


With Strange Bedfellows

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Animal Dicks, Awkward Sex, Bestiality, Breaking the Bed, Crack Treated Extremely Seriously, Enemies to Lovers, Equine Penis, Extremely Large Cock, First Time, Half-Human, Half-beast, Interspecies Sex, Knotting, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mating, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Non-Human Genitalia, Other, Pining, Porn with Feelings, References to Attempted Rape/Non-Con, References to Prison Sex, References to Tentacle Dick, Seriously the most awkward sex imaginable, Seriously the most awkward sex imaginable because of animal dicks, Wedding Night, Wedding Night is Their First Time, Weddings, Wolf Sex, Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-21 11:50:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14284296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Before he started living with Jean Valjean, Javert believed he would live his life alone, as the Law dictated … until his wedding day.





	With Strange Bedfellows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



> Happy Smutswap, Esteliel! Hopefully the attempts to marry your diverse prompts and pairings were sufficiently coherent, and sufficiently smutty ;)
> 
> CW for a Very Explicit Animal Sex AU, containing very explicit, if mostly fluffy, sex involving different types of animals and their diverse reproductive equipment. Please heed tags.
> 
> My thanks, as always, to S. for the beta!

Before he started living with Jean Valjean, Javert believed he would spend his life alone, as the Law dictated. 

Dog-son of a half-wolf, he had been born into a clan that lived in forests in the south. His mother had welcomed a half-hound to her den in violation of the Law; after Javert was weaned, his dam and her half-breed son were cast out from the pack. 

Javert had grown up on the streets of Hyères, full of dire stories about his parents' impure coupling. Young Javert had been determined never to commit the same transgressions. He would never succumb to the half-wolf’s winter mating season, lest he make the error of siring children and compounding his deviant bloodline. He would make himself irreproachable in the eyes of the Law, and beyond the selfish lusts of the flesh.

A half-breed such as he could never have thought to find a mate. Let alone to take as mate a former convict whose true name was Jean Valjean, and whose true nature was a mystery even to Javert, who had known the man for twenty years.

  


*

  


He had first set eyes on Valjean in the fearsome bagne of Toulon, where all prisoners were treated as less than men. Javert, then a young guard barely out of his teens, had been witness to blatant depravity amongst the convicts — men and half-men, half-wolves and half-hounds — all alike. They would go into seasonal rut, or in the case of the polyestrus, would be perpetually in heat. Seasonal couplings both consensual and non-consensual, though prohibited by the Law, were rife.

Though Valjean was a prisoner of notable physical prowess, he never seemed to prey on others. On one occasion, even his strength had been insufficient to protect him from himself becoming prey. 

Javert had happened on the scene entirely by accident. He was returning to the main building at a time when the salle was supposed to be empty, the prisoners labouring at the worksite in the summer heat. In the sweltering salle, four other prisoners were holding Valjean down, while a fifth was poised to assault him. The assailant’s red smock was rucked up around his armpits, and the evidence of his prurient intent on fragrant display.

Javert hesitated for an instant. He had never seen a half-mer, let alone one in the full throes of rut. 

The assailant’s body was long and pale and completely hairless. Instead of a mannish prick, he had a tentacle-like member, knobbly and purplish, twice as long as a man’s arm and frighteningly flexible. Other secondary tendrils grasped the globes of Valjean’s buttocks so tightly the flesh showed white, spreading him ruthlessly, and oozing a thick, viscous fluid directly into his exposed hole.

The heady smell of unrestrained sex curled in the fetid air. It was not the season for half-wolves, but something that could only have been a first heat struck Javert and almost bent him double with lust.

Valjean was resisting ferociously, but the other half-men held him fast. He loosed a groan of despair as the mer’s member poised to strike, and this finally galvanised Javert into action. 

“Stop that at once!”

The men froze, and Javert charged forward. He bared his sharp wolf’s teeth and brought his truncheon down onto the mass of writhing tentacles, wrenching a howl from the half-beast.

The commotion brought Javert’s colleagues to the scene. In the ensuing melee, Javert managed to set aside his own desires; besides, his duty was to see to the injured prisoner. 

Valjean’s bare skin was slick with the mer’s sex fluids. Shivering, he clasped his torn smock around his tormented body, hiding his sex from prying eyes. Javert got to his knees to aid him, and his proximity to the prisoner’s abused flesh and powerful muscles inflamed him with lust.

Javert fought for control. He might be young, but he was no mindless beast at the mercy of his instincts.

“You are unharmed?”

“As any imprisoned here can be,” Valjean said, wearily, the first words he had ever said to Javert, and he let Javert help him rise. 

Javert would remember it — the sultry, reeking salle, the punishment wreaked upon the half-beast abusers, the sensation of Valjean’s bare skin as he assisted the prisoner to his feet — as long as he lived.

 

*

 

Javert would continue to think of Valjean as half-mer. Which was why, in Montreuil, he could not reconcile Madeleine with that man. 

True, Montreuil’s mayor had the same weary features, the same lean, muscular body. But the townsfolk were certain Madeleine was half-bull, notwithstanding that he was as respected a business owner as any pure-bred man. 

This speculation had been fueled by the accident in the streets of the upper city. Old Fauchelevent had fallen and become trapped beneath his cart. Madeleine had taken off his coat and lain down in the muddy street, and lifted the cart up with his beefy shoulders, saving the old half-breed's life. 

The thick muck had covered Madeleine’s fine clothes, and the wet trousers clung to loins and flanks that were surely bullish in their heft and sheer power. 

Javert had tried not to stare at this evidence as he assisted the mayor to his feet. The last time he had touched someone in this way, it had been to raise Jean Valjean from his knees. 

“Monsieur, it is well that you are unharmed. That was incredibly brave, and incredibly foolish.”

Madeleine said, “It is hardly bravery nor foolishness to help when another is in need.”

Javert’s control had improved vastly since Toulon, so much that he was able to withstand the heat of the half-wolf’s winter rut. However, the presence of the dignified mayor tested the limits of that control. During his time in Montreuil, he found he could not stop thinking about the muddy trousers, and the bullish thighs and balls and prick that were outlined underneath. 

He struggled not to touch himself over such thoughts. He would master his sinful nature or he would cast himself out — there could be no mercy or compromise in upholding the Law.

He was, in the event, wrong about Madeleine’s true identity. Astonishingly, the mayor surrendered himself to custody after a case of mistaken identity, and revealed himself to be Jean Valjean after all. 

Javert observed the trial proceedings; the conflicting identity evidence that was presented had left him even more confused. It seemed the ex-convict Jean Valjean was neither half-mer nor half-bull, but instead something entirely different.

 

*

 

After Jean Valjean escaped from the bagne once more, Javert followed. He deployed every skill of his half-breed heritage — his bloodhound’s instincts, his wolfen determination — but the pursuit eventually came to naught. 

Those years after he’d lost track of Valjean were restless ones: eight unsettled summers and eight winter mating ruts. Every inch of him desired to know what manner of half-beast the ex-convict really was. His hands burned to rip away the half-man’s false scales or plumage and uncover his secrets for himself. For eight years, he fought his baser, beastly desires to a standstill. 

Then there came the ninth year — the spring that brought disease to Paris, the summer that brought another rebellion. The people were protesting against the sub-human status of half-men and half-breeds under the Law; they sought reforms that would allow even ex-convict half-breeds to vote and to marry.

Javert could not then conceive of half-breeds being able to marry, or worse, of the Law being unjust. The Law was irreproachable, a pole-star that pointed to true North, an unshakeable foundation on which he had built his blameless life.

He said as much when he found himself at the hands of young rebels — pure-bred men and half-men, who had come together on the barricades in Saint-Martin to advocate for a more just world.

“Monsieur, we’re fighting for your rights! You should be standing with us,” the half-hound who called himself Combeferre declared, as the rebels took Javert prisoner.

“Half-breeds have no rights under the Law,” Javert responded grimly. At that time, he believed it with all his heart.

And then Jean Valjean stepped forward to claim him. 

“You are wrong,” that infamous ex-convict told him, the half-breed whom Javert had pursued for so many years, and he turned Javert free. 

In that one act of mercy, the foundation was destroyed from beneath Javert’s feet, the North Star was ripped from the sky, and he was no longer certain of anything — save that his once blameless life had been unravelled from its very core.

Javert knew he could not spare himself. He cast himself out, he cast himself into the Seine to get away from his sin, and to get as far away from that accursed convict as he could. 

But it was to no avail. Mercy had uncovered him at last, and it proved as uncompromising as the Law had been. Jean Valjean cast himself into the river after him, as swift as a mer and as tireless as a bull, and he wrenched Javert from the river and compelled him to live.

 

*

 

After the summer’s confusion came the slow regret of autumn and then winter’s familiar passions. Javert found himself lingering in Valjean’s house. It was easier, and immeasurably worse, to know he owed his life to this benefactor, and to discover how, ex-convict or no, half-breed or no, Valjean had surmounted the Law as Javert’s true North.

By some miracle, it seemed Valjean had also contrived some way to rescue most of the rebels from the barricades. Valjean’s adopted daughter — a half-breed whose half-winged dam had been abandoned by her pure-bred lover — was in love with one of the rebels, and Valjean had allied himself to their cause for her sake and not for his own.

“I tried to keep her bloodline a secret, to spare her,” Valjean confessed, when Javert thought to enquire, “but it seems she discovered it when she and Marius were first together. And after I told her the truth, that I was an ex-convict, and a half-breed, and no relation to her, she still sees me as her father. Is that not a wonderful gift?”

“Whyever would she not?” Javert said in disbelief. “You have shown her nothing but a father's love. And now you are even committed to helping her marry that pure-bred fool.”

Javert could barely believe it, but he seemed to have also committed himself to that same effort. He accompanied Valjean to political meetings with the survivors of the barricades, and spent his modest pension in support of the abandoned half-breed children who roamed wild on Paris's streets. 

Four years passed in this manner. Javert told himself that this quiet, virtuous friendship spent doing good works could be a new foundation for a blameless life. It was certainly more than he deserved, given that he continued, to his great shame, to be plagued by sinful, desirous thoughts about his benefactor, and not only in winter. 

Then the nephew of that old soldier Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Paris, with a British heiress on his arm, and the people embraced him. Louis-Napoleon’s mistress was half-winged, and in order to marry her, the first French President had the Law remade, to allow all those who wished to marry to do so regardless of their lineage.

On that day, Marius went to his knees in the winter slush of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, and the next month, the lovebirds were married, with seemingly all of Paris in attendance.

And that was not the most unexpected marriage to occur.

 

*

 

The evening after Cosette’s wedding luncheon, Javert settled into his chair in the living room of the house at Rue Plumet and admitted to himself a satisfaction in a job well done. The room was comfortable despite the February cold, and the omnipresent heat of the winter mating season was on this day quite becalmed. 

He looked across the room at Valjean with a similar satisfaction. After too many years, that man had finally managed to reclaim his name, with a pardon procured from the President by Marius’s grandfather, and a shelter established for abandoned half-breed women and children in the name of Cosette’s mother.

Valjean caught him looking, and smiled his hesitant, wry smile. “You are in good spirits this evening. And no wonder, for we have had quite a momentous day.”

“I had never thought we would live to see it,” Javert mused. “Half-men and half-breeds marrying, and living openly in society! It is hardly to be believed.”

“And yet it has come to pass. Cosette is safely wed, as I promised her mother she would be, and my life’s journey is complete at last.”

Javert frowned. It perturbed him to hear Valjean speak this way, though he could not immediately say why. “You are not yet so old. There will be more journeying for you, never doubt it.”

A spasm of emotion crossed Valjean’s face. “I did doubt it, once,” he said. “I used to think there would be nothing left in life after Cosette was married… But now, I do believe there might be one more journey for me. And it is one which I would like to take with you, if you would wish.”

“Where are we travelling to?” Javert began, but his words trailed off as Valjean got slowly to his knees on the living room floor.

“…What are you doing?”

Valjean said, diffidently, “I may have obtained a second wedding licence, while I was at the registry? For I thought you might not mind entering into this covenant with me, now that the Law finally allows half-breeds to marry.”

For a long and embarrassing moment, Javert could not find his voice. When he could finally speak again, he said, in a tone that would have made any reasonable suitor take flight, “You cannot be serious.”

Fortunately, Valjean did not seem minded to flee; then again, he could not easily have fled his own house. “I am, very much so. We have lived together for the last four years, and I have seen you work tirelessly, for Cosette’s sake and for mine. I have become very devoted to you. And I have reason to believe you might welcome my suit.”

He reached out and clasped Javert’s hand in both of his. The calloused grasp was gentler than any touch Javert had ever known. Javert had to swallow; he had told himself Valjean would not have noticed his surreptitious cycles of mating rut, the feverish winter dreams in which he still occasionally disgraced himself. But clearly his secret had not escaped his benefactor.

“You are not wrong,” he said, awkwardly. “But I never believed you would feel the same way. In all these years, you have not once given any sign!” 

Valjean brushed his lips to Javert’s knuckles, sending a rush of warmth through Javert’s body. “I am sorry to have left you in doubt. But I am an old man, and old-fashioned enough to believe that one only acts upon such feelings with one’s espoused. If you would marry me, we may finally indulge ourselves as I believe we both desire.” 

“Very well,” Javert said, trying to reach for his old equanimity, which seemed to have vanished along with his sense of restraint. “After all, it is a thing now allowed under the Law.”

Valjean got to his feet. His eyes were bright, his familiar face even more handsome in this magnificent winter of their lives than in their shared, suspicious spring. Javert still did not truly know if the man was half-beast or half-breed, and discovered that he no longer cared — for, clasped in a first embrace from those brawny arms, he knew all that he needed to know about Jean Valjean.

 

*

 

The small wedding was arranged without further delay. The registry at the Palais de Justice performed a perfunctory civil ceremony, where they exchanged vows together with several other half-beast couples. The Gillenormand cooks prepared a simple luncheon, and Marius’s friend Courfeyrac, their colleague on the political frontlines, had commissioned and installed, in the largest room at Rue Plumet, a brand new double bed.

“I also had Feuilly lay in fresh straw in the shed, in the event your exertions take you in that way,” Courfeyrac said to Javert, winking; when Javert realised what the boy meant, he felt the blood rise hotly into his face.

“Don’t mind him, Monsieur Javert,” Combeferre said. “Some of us assumed Monsieur Fauchelevent was half-hound, but I can assure you not all us half-hounds feel the need to mate in the open.”

“Monsieur _Valjean_ ,” Courfeyrac corrected, “and as he is clearly half- _winged_ , the shed would be the perfect place for a nest. Although you must take care with him, Monsieur Javert — the half-winged aren’t as hardy as you might be used to, and mixed-breed mating is a tricky enough thing.”

“You’ve done enough of it to know,” Feuilly scoffed, shoving his friend in the shoulder, and Javert, cheeks flushing uncharacteristically scarlet, could not see the backs of these incorrigible buffoons quickly enough.

“How nice this is,” Valjean said, when the wine was drunk and the plates were cleared and they were finally alone. 

“Are you tired?” Javert asked, and then flushed again as he realised his innocent query might be taken for an invitation to much less innocent activity.

Fortunately, Valjean did not take the remark out of turn. He placed his arm around Javert and said, “It has been a long day, but I do not feel tired in the least.”

“That is good, for neither am I,” Javert said; this time, Valjean raised an eyebrow at his blush. 

“Although neither of us is tired, perhaps it would be time to retire to bed?” he suggested, quite innocently, and reached for Javert’s hand.

 

*

 

Somehow, they managed to negotiate the staircase without serious incident. They doffed their wedding finery, and performed their ablutions in their shirtsleeves. Then they took to the room that was to be their bedroom, which the commissioned bed and the rising moon made into a new and shining country.

Valjean took a seat at the edge of their new bed. He hesitated, as if upon the ledge of a precipice, and then he extended a shy hand to Javert. 

Javert might have never sought out a mate, but he was familiar enough with what men and half-men did with each other in the dark. He went into Valjean’s arms, and lowered his mouth to his new spouse’s.

To kiss and be kissed was a secret thing made only for men. Beasts did not nuzzle their snouts together, wolves in heat would sooner snap and bite than lick. This slow, luxuriant press of lips, this slide of wet tongues, this drinking down of small noises and quickening breath, was given to men alone out of God’s creatures, and half-men were privileged to partake of this inheritance. Javert had shared previous chaste kisses with Valjean, and, since the proposal, substantially less chaste kisses, but this first kiss under the banner of legal marriage felt indeed like the joining of kindred souls celebrated by men and half-men alike.

Then the kiss deepened, and abruptly matters took a turn for the more debauched. Javert felt the bloodlust of the winter season rise within his body, taking him as a high fever. He clenched his fists in Valjean’s shirt; he heard growling noises and realised that he was making them, low in his throat, like a wolf in the small agony of its rut.

Valjean was shivering too, but he rubbed Javert’s chest in an attempt to reassure him. “It’s all right,” he murmured against Javert’s mouth. “This is new for me as well. Here, let me…” and he began to fumble with Javert’s shirt.

For some reason, Valjean did not seem to find Javert’s big, sweating body to be as repellent as Javert had feared he would. He ran his fingers through the thick mat of hair on Javert’s breast and arms and belly, tentatively at first, and then gripping more tightly. The sharp, tugging sensation was unexpectedly pleasurable. Valjean’s fingernail scraped across a tight nub of nipple, and Javert had to inhale sharply.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Javert managed; he was not sure how to ask Valjean to do it again. At any rate, Valjean’s exploratory hands were travelling once more, downwards and northwards, past Javert’s navel where the pelt of hair became even thicker. He stopped at the line of Javert’s underclothes, staring at the bulge of Javert’s member as it strained against the thin fabric.

“May I?” Valjean asked, hesitantly, tracing the hard outline. When Javert made a strangled sound of assent, he drew the cloth down and took Javert in hand.

Javert was no longer a whelp, liable to spill over himself at a moment’s provocation, but in that moment he was certain he would shame himself in Valjean’s rough clasp. “Wait,” he managed to gasp, and Valjean immediately stopped his touches.

“Is this too much?”

“Give me one moment,” Javert muttered, putting his forearm over his sweating face. Valjean’s movements had stilled, but although he could not see Valjean’s face, Javert could feel the weight of the man’s regard ranging freely over his nakedness.

“I had not realised how thick the hair on your body is,” Valjean murmured. “You have such thick whiskers, and look how the hair covers the rest of you — doubtless this is so for all half-wolves? And I had thought you would be fearsomely large, but you are in all most pleasing to look at.” Javert made a muffled groan, and Valjean added, “Please don’t be embarrassed. Will you look at me again?” 

“I would rather look than be looked upon,” Javert said, gruffly, but he did take his arm away, and was gratified to see that Valjean had turned a shy red from the tips of his ears to his exposed skin of his throat.

“Then by all means, you should look your fill.” 

Javert reached out with shaking hands to unfasten and remove the shirt that seemed too small for Valjean. Everything about Valjean’s bared body was large and superhumanly powerful: his barrel chest, the broad wingspan of his shoulders, the massive thighs and bulk of muscle that a man half his age would have been proud to display. He was not as hairy or sharp-toothed as a half-wolf would have been, but otherwise there was no other hint as to his breeding — he was as graceful as the winged, as long-limbed as a mer, as proud as a feline. There were strange silvery tufts adorning his belly and strong loins that could be fur or feathers or hard scales, and an enormous bulge tented the front of his small clothes, too big to be anything human.

Javert felt his mouth fill with water at the sight. Finally, he would learn this last secret of Jean Valjean, and they would liberate each other of their chastity, regardless of whichever breed they were.

“There are no words for how you look,” he told Valjean, who blushed harder. “May I look upon all of you?”

Valjean said, diffidently, “You indeed have that right. Only I do not wish to alarm you, Javert, so you must prepare yourself.”

“I cannot believe anything about you would alarm me,” Javert said, beginning to stroke him through his small clothes. Valjean groaned, and the inhuman thing strained helplessly against the tight, constricting fabric — a writhing mass of tentacles, perhaps, or a spiky feline member?

“Yes — please —” Valjean lay back and spread his thighs for Javert’s caress, and Javert tore away the thin cloth and uncovered the mystery which the man had concealed from him for more than three decades.

Not scales or spikes, but a tumescent prepuce as thick and long as Javert’s forearm, a massive vascular length that emerged from its sheath to a full, glistening hardness. Heavy, low-hanging balls were adorned with silvering tufts of horsehair, the same colour as the thatch on Valjean’s chest and on his white head.

“I should have known,” Javert said, his pulse hammering in his ears. He could not take his eyes from the power of those stallion’s flanks, from the proud girth that jutted from a racehorse’s loins. 

He had never before seen the half-equine, which lived in herds in the tree-lined plains of the North. He had seen horses, of course, but they paled in comparison with the magnificent creature presently gracing their bed. In a different age, Valjean would have been depicted on ancient pottery or canvas, standing on a centaur’s hooves — bare-chested and posing heroically with bow and arrow, or poised to carry off some half-swooning trollop in impossibly muscular arms. 

Valjean looked down at himself uncomfortably. “It is … not too big?” he asked, his cheeks the same colour as his flushed prick. “It has been so since my first heat. I never thought I would be able to mount another, nor that anyone could pleasure it… indeed, I hardly dared even consider it.”

“It is not too big,” Javert hastened to assure him. “Don’t be afraid. Let me try.”

It was a thing only the most wanton of humans did; in the same way as animals did not kiss one another, they also did not pleasure each other with their tongues. Javert himself was only acquainted with the practice in theory, but yet he did not hesitate, determined as he was not to falter at this first hurdle. He leaned down and wrapped his hand around Valjean’s length and took the bulbous head of it carefully into his mouth.

Immediately, he choked. It was indeed dauntingly big. Saliva dripped down his chin as he struggled to breathe around a girth that seemed even larger than an ordinary stallion's. But he persevered — the taste of the fluid that leaked copiously from the glans was strong but not unpleasant, and the rich smell of horseflesh that surrounded them was intoxicating. After a moment, he was able to breathe in through his nose, and he started to slide his mouth up and further down, discovering he could take in more and more of that giant length as he became accustomed to the act. 

Valjean had been holding himself still, so as not to impede Javert's attentions, the effort making him shiver with excitement, like a yearling at his first race.

"You should not... you do not need to..."

Javert glared at the man, hoping to convey his intention to fully perform his marital duties, and redoubled his efforts. The massive prick crammed down his throat, gagging him again, but the thick fluid, mingled with his spit, was sufficient to ease the way and to allow him to continue.

Valjean had started to make high-pitched sounds that left Javert in no doubt that his novice attempts, clumsy as they were, were being well received. His hands made white-knuckled fists in the new sheets, the long muscles in his flanks trembling with the strain of holding himself back. Javert felt the large, leathery balls draw up tightly, heard a change in Valjean’s laboured breathing, and realised that his mate was approaching the finish line. 

Javert’s jaw felt hinged apart, his throat ached from the insistent battering, and yet wild horses could not make him stop. He opened his mouth wide and took in as much as he could, gorging himself on the salty taste — and then Valjean cried out sharply, and the deluge came.

It was impossible to drink down the flood of Valjean’s release. It spilled out of Javert’s mouth and spurted over his face and hair and chest, painting everything thickly with white, while Javert coughed and spluttered and swallowed as best he could.

It went on for a long time, seemingly longer than any human orgasm. When Valjean was finally wrung dry, Javert pulled himself from his knees and settled himself against Valjean’s broad body, heedless of the mess. 

They lay together comfortably, the new-risen moon shining down upon their no longer pristine marriage bed.

That man, his mate, murmured, at length, “I had never thought… You have wrought a miracle.”

“You see,” Javert said, roughly; his eyes were damp, his throat rubbed raw, and his heart was triumphant. “Not too large. I even enjoyed it. There was nothing to fear.”

“Indeed,” Valjean said. “And now it is my turn.” He fingered the hair on Javert’s chest, upon which spend was rapidly drying, and then moved his hand southward. “Do you wish to claim me?”

At these words, the fever of Javert’s rut seized him anew. He belatedly realised his own untended-to prick was chafing against Valjean’s thigh. Valjean traced it absently — it was not more than half the length of Valjean’s own member — and cupped the hairy balls below, as if to gauge how easily he could be claimed by this thing.

Javert tried to consider what little he knew about the topic. It was nearly impossible to think through the fog of lust. “Do men not claim one another with the help of oil or salve of some kind? Which I am not sure we have, unless we can repurpose something from the kitchens.”

“I don’t think half-breeds require such assistive measures,” Valjean said, continuing to idly caress him. Javert groaned, and put his hand over Valjean’s, beginning the almost-painful stroke with which he always touched himself. Valjean hesitated, and then copied that wringing squeeze so perfectly that Javert’s eyes nearly rolled back in his head.

“Yes — ah, God, like that, exactly —”

Valjean continued for another full-handled stroke, and then he let go. Focusing with some difficulty, Javert saw Valjean’s large palm was wet with copious pre-come. He wiped his hand between his thighs, then he leaned back and parted his legs for Javert. 

Javert raised himself to his knees and took hold of Valjean’s sweating flanks. His mind seemed to have gone entirely stupid with desire; it was only at the last moment that he remembered to check himself. “Wait. I do not wish to hurt you —”

“You would never hurt me,” Valjean said, tenderly. Then he added, with a small smile, “And, in any case, I doubt you actually could,” and he lifted his hips in welcome.

The deep cleft of Valjean’s arse was shockingly dark against his pale flesh and the tufts of white horsehair. As Javert hesitated, Valjean spread his buttocks, and raised the huge, slick sucker of his anus to the last of the light.

The white winter moon seemed to cast a haze that overpowered Javert’s hindbrain, shattering all rational thought. Dimly, he heard himself roar, and then the wolf within him flung itself upon its prey.

 _This_ was not a thing humans did. 

It was pure animal, and obscene: the snapping and snarling, the rampant grappling of limbs, the fever to ravage and use and possess. The wolf took hold of his mate by the throat, biting and sucking and tasting the pulsing blood beneath his skin. His mate whined as the wolf’s tumescent flesh forced him open, claiming him relentlessly under the full moon.

For the first time in his adult life, Javert felt himself seized by the wild, wind-swept forests of his birth. He heard the approving snarls of his wolfpack around him, felt the fierce, unbridled lust of the rut in his veins. The wolf within him was impatient, desperate to pin its partner to the mating ground — and, oh, his mate was willing; he was showing throat and spreading himself and allowing himself to be held down and fucked, hard and fast, until the beast was satisfied.

As the night crashed down, the insufficient frame of their soft, human bed could not hold them. The thin sheets were ripped to shreds; the wooden structure and palliasse were laid waste beneath the ferocity of their coupling.

Then Valjean cried out, and Javert felt a great swelling within him: a protrusion that drove him even more deeply into his mate’s body and locked them profoundly together. Valjean made another keening sound as he was trapped in place, split further apart upon the wolf’s swollen, engorged knot.

The full moon was in Javert’s eyes, half-blinding him. His mind clamoured with want and fevered claiming — _mine, all this, mine; you are mine_ — there was nothing else save for his insatiable hunger to take and conquer his mate, to mark him, and make him his.

“Yes, yours,” Valjean said, and Javert realised he must have spoken aloud — or else the words had been imparted through the primal rhythm of their bodies, the gasps of their shared breath, the connection between their newly-espoused souls. 

He grappled for the last remnants of control. He was not just a beast, he was also a man; this was his virgin husband, and this their first mating.

“Am I hurting you?”

“It is nothing,” Valjean panted. Perspiration sheened his forehead as if he was suffering; he moaned as the knot worked its way still deeper inside him. His massive prick had hardened again, the heady scent of his arousal surrounding them both. “Don't stop."

Javert could not have, even if he wanted to; he had used up the last of his restraint, and the wolf was starving.

Moon-blind, the wolf clawed his way towards a frantic release, flooding his mate with gush after gush of his thick seed. A beat, and then Valjean was spending again in his turn, coming wrecked and dry upon Javert’s knot.

When Javert finally returned to himself, he was lying in the ruins of the sheets and bedding, curled protectively around Valjean’s body. His knot was quiescent, still lodged and swollen inside his mate’s passage; thankfully, Valjean seemed in no hurry to disengage from it.

The moonlight filled their room with the hard, white abandon of the forest. In the aftermath of the rut, to Javert’s eyes, everything was preternaturally bright, edges stark and vivid in outline, all the colours brilliant and intense — the pale blue curtains, the silver candlesticks, the purple marks which he had bitten and sucked into Valjean’s skin. The smell of horseflesh and wolf heat curled thickly against the walls and the destruction of their bed.

Javert’s throat ached, his flesh throbbed as if it could barely contain the fire that simmered underneath, and he felt as indelibly marked in the same way as he had marked Valjean.

“…Yours,” Valjean repeated, drowsy now that the heat had passed. 

Javert said, “Make no mistake, I am as much yours.” It sounded almost accusatory; fortunately, his new mate was slow to take offence.

Valjean huffed an exhausted laugh. Then he paused to take in the ruin of their surroundings. 

“Well, we seem to have damaged our new bed,” he said, which was somewhat of an understatement.

Javert found he did not much care about how improper the broken bed might look. He wrapped an arm across Valjean’s broad chest, holding him closely. “Your son-in-law’s shameless friend will likely make us another one.”

Valjean hesitated. “We should tell him not to? For we may just break it again,” he said, in worried tones, and it was Javert’s turn to laugh. Then, “Are you going to let me up?”

“I’m not sure?” Javert gave an experimental tug, and they both yelped in pain. “I’m afraid we might be trapped here for a while.”

Valjean reached across and rubbed Javert’s flank comfortingly. Javert leaned into the touch, and they held each other in companionable silence. Gradually, though, Valjean’s strokes grew longer, and teasing in a way that neither of them expected, and slowly but surely, Javert felt the by-now-familiar prickle under his skin. He groped warily between Valjean’s thighs, and his suspicions were rewarded when that magnificent equine penis twitched under his exploring fingers.

Valjean pressed back against Javert’s body. Surely his modest, virtuous mate could not have intended the lewd effect produced by grinding his arse upon Javert’s still-engorged knot? Innocently, Valjean remarked, “There might be less pleasant ways to pass the time.”

Javert had to swallow. Improbably, he felt himself rousing again: the wolf’s hunger was insatiable, and it seemed his equine mate was his match in perversion. “Enough. You are too much for me.”

“It is quite the other way around,” Valjean said, and turned his head to kiss him.

Javert kissed him back, well aware that the winter mating season for wolves was not yet over, and the equine season would start shortly with the spring. 

“Have it your way,” he said, surrendering to the inevitable. After all, they had a lifetime of virginity to make up for, and there was no better time to make a start.

**Author's Note:**

> Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s [1836 coup attempt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_III) was unsuccessful, IRL; this AU suggests he would succeed, and champion the rights of oppressed minorities XD. 
> 
> Title from the [bed-sharing verses](http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/tempest.2.2.html) in _the Tempest_ , where the jester, Trinculo, has had to reluctantly bed down in a storm with a strange creature: _Legg'd like a man! and his fins like arms! Warm, o' my troth! I do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffer'd by a thunder-bolt. Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows._


End file.
